The Other 11,001 Things to be Miserable About
by Heist
Summary: Hermione does not take disappointment sitting down. Draco does not handle falling in love standing upright. A love story of public drunkenness, family legacies, bad hair, quidditch, melancholy caribou, and falling down. A lot. DMHG, EWE.
1. People Who Argue Using the Same Phrase

**Falling, and the Other 11,001 Things to Be Miserable About**  
A Fanfiction by Heist

*

**One: People Who Argue By Using the Same Phrase Over and Over**

Hermione Granger was to be on 'administrative leave' for a period of no less than six months, effective immediately. Minister Shacklebolt had been very understanding, and if after those six months she still felt the same way about the Department of Magical Law Enforcement he wished her luck on her next endeavor. Hermione was less enlightened in her understanding, and she felt very comfortable expressing her feelings verbally, eloquently, and explicitly.

"I'm Hermione Granger! I'm Hermione _fucking_ Granger! You can't make me leave! I _run_ this place, and if not a one of you has the stones to fire me properly I'm not leaving!"

Harry Potter arrived in time to interrupt an angry soliloquy on the sexual inadequacies of her most recent (and decidedly _former_) bed partner, and there was a smattering of intimidated applause as he escorted Hermione off the premises and directly to the nearest muggle bar. Hermione was displeased, but she accepted the first drink, and the second, and the sixth.

"Bastards," Hermione slurred into her liquor, "can't tell me what to do. I'm _Hermione Granger_."

Harry, being very much divided on the issue, diplomatically said nothing as he topped off her drink. "Look," he said. "Think of it as... an overdue vacation. Relax, take a few weeks off, perhaps finish revising the twelfth edition of Hogwarts, A History. You could, I don't know, take up a hobby. Like macrame."

Hermione threw him a dark look and blew bubbles in her whiskey. One popped in her nose, and she gagged as the liquor seared its way up her nasal cavities and down her esophagus. "Okay, so maybe not macrame," Harry conceded. "But Kingsley should cool down in a few months, and you can come back and play evil overlord, and it will be like it all never happened. Almost."

Hermione paused in wiping at her streaming eyes to calculate the odds, and decided she had better chances of angels burping out her arse. If she wanted to be fair (she really didn't, but she was something of a crusader for fairness), she wasn't completely innocent of all-wrongdoing. "S'okay. Maybe I overreacted kindof."

"You don't say."

Fine. Tracking Ron down while he was on assignment to prove he was trying to get out of doing anything for her thirtieth birthday was a little extreme. Blowing his cover wide open while he was infiltrating a cabal of dark wizards might have been strategically unwise. But calling him out for cheating on her with That Cow right before the dark wizards unmasked for a trust ritual, thereby scattering all of said wizards, undoing two years of solid undercover work, and getting all the in-place agents wounded in the process… well. Chances were very good the fraternization regulations were being rewritten to make note of why exactly it was a _very bad idea_ to sleep with one's thirty-year-old, desperately unmarried boss.

If she had been anyone else, Hermione might have been very deeply fired, rather than put on creative indefinite vacation. But as she had been wont to point out in the last few hours, she was Hermione Granger. _The_ Hermione Granger. She was the brains of the war-ending, wand-wielding friends-and-companions for_ever_ Three Musketeers. She had done groundbreaking work with house elf rights when she went back to school to finish her education, and carried through on it when she came to work at the Ministry. Even though it had been three doors down and wasn't even her job, when the Undergrounders reestablished contact with the wizarding world, Hermione was key in redefining the former treaties and crusading for goblin citizenship. She still had tea with the Goblin Queen every third Thursday, and the baby Prince would be sorting at Hogwarts in a year or two, depending on the time differential. She'd eradicated blood purity laws, for Merlin's sake!

All that being most impressive, Hermione's career might have survived sending _The_ Ronald Weasley to Saint Mungo's, if, in her wrath, she had not traveled back to the Ministry directly to also have him _fired_.

Irate or not, much as one could not fire _The_ Hermione Granger, one could also not fire _The_ Ronald Weasley. Even if he was a cheating bastard who was getting his balls hexed off _again_ the next time she saw him.

"Really, though, Harry? Pansy Parkinson?" The name sloshed around in her mouth like a cocktail of spoiled milk and old schnapps, with too little slurring for her preference. The alcohol was wearing off; damn her ludicrous tolerance and a few too many nights bar-hopping to Hell.

Harry had the grace to wince. Ron made bad decisions. Frequently. More frequently than could rationally be explained, which was why Hermione had made most of his decisions for him over the last ten years. Clearly, he had missed the memo some years back, wherein she had informed him that cheating was intolerable.

"That's it," Hermione announced. "I am moving out. Teach the asshole how to… something. I'm gonna teach him good, Harry."

Harry pulled off his glasses and dropped his head to the bar. "I'll call Ginny to make up the sofa before she leaves for autumn training, then. We were going to take a mini-break before the international season opened up, but I can meet up with her after I help you move out."

But you weren't s'posed to agree with me! You don't agree with me when I'm drunk! That's the rules!"

Harry groaned as he tipped his head up to face her. "Hermione, when you decided to live together again, you sold your flat to move into Ron's. He pays all the rent. He's not going to let you keep the place."

Hermione wondered if perhaps Ron's poor decision-making skills weren't sometimes contagious. "I'm Hermione Granger," she grumbled, for lack of anything useful to say.

The bartender poured her another drink.

*

Hermione opened her eyes to blue chintz curtains that did nothing to block the daylight and an overpowering urge to brush her teeth. She considered the remains of beer nuts caked in her molars and a burgeoning migraine and rolled over to bury her face in the sofa cushion. She only ever woke up on Harry's couch when she'd had a falling out with Ron, and she knew from prior experience that Ron usually crawled back around the time her alcoholic amnesia wore off.

In any event, she had a few hours yet to sleep off some of the hangover and figure out how to magnanimously forgive whatever he'd done, as well as create the appearance of not having gone on an epic memory-potion-rivaling bender. Harry had never let on to Ron that she liked to… _chemically unwind_ on occasion, and he didn't need to know. She reached back to itch the back of her head and sighed in cozy contentment.

Except… there was something in her hair. Hermione frowned and cracked her eyes open as she prodded through a snarling tangle to investigate. It was damp. And somehow porous and flaky at the same time.

She broke off a bit and extricated it from its comfortable nest. In the bright morning sunlight, it wasn't quite white; it seemed to be more of an eggshell in color, and it reeked of citrus floor polish and something else. Hermione furrowed her brow and sniffed it inelegantly. It looked familiar and the odor emanating from it was reminiscent of _something_, but blessed unconsciousness beckoned and Hermione thought it wise to answer.

Besides, it was Saturday, and what with the weekend and her birthday it wasn't like she had to go in to w—

OHGOD.

Hermione threw herself to the floor and fumbled for her wand as the events of the previous day pounded back into her head with the rhythm of her hangover. Ron, the Ministry, Harry, Harry saving her from drowning after she followed that poor red-headed muggle into the men's toilet and passed out in the urinal…

She seized her wand from between the sofa cushions and fumbled toward the bathroom, rasping spells furiously. "Accio scissors! Accio toothpaste! Accio _bleach_!"

The necessary items floated in obligingly, and Hermione dropped the bleach and scissors onto the toilet lid (Harry, unlike Ron, seemed to grasp the import of putting the lid down). The tube of toothpaste she seized with religious fervency, squeezed half the contents into her mouth directly, and chewed. She spat into the sink as the urge to vomit subsided and set to hacking the trough cookie out of her hair.

That task proved more difficult than reclaiming oral hygiene. The piss wafer had lodged perilously close to her scalp, and she mowed down half the hair on her head in swaths and messy chops before she was satisfied it was gone. She shook her head in distaste and popped the cap off the bleach bottle. Hermione hated the smell, but she preferred clean germless bacteria-annihilating bleach over the alternative, and she leaned over the side of the bathtub to dump the bottle over the unfortunate remnants of her hair.

Only after the last of the bleach was down the drain and Hermione's scalp burned like fire did she remember that she was, in fact, a witch, and there just might be better ways of handling this. "Ah _fuck_."

*

Hermione clutched at her mangled hair and wailed. "Eleven years!"

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose and handed the tub of ice cream over, rather than attempt to fight a scoop into the bowl. Hermione accepted it with a hiccup, and reached up to the vanity for her spoon. "He _forgot_ to marry me," Hermione added. "How do you _forget_ to get married?"

It was a perfectly valid question. She had certainly hinted enough over the years. "And now I'm _thirty._ And _hideous_. And no one will ever shag me again! How will I have babies if no one will shag me, Harry?" She dropped her head to the toilet lid and punched the linoleum for emphasis.

A solid minute passed, and Harry offered no supportive words, nor even a hand on her shoulder for solidarity. She lifted her head and sniffled conspicuously, but he didn't move from his perch on the edge of the tub. "What do you want me to say?" Harry asked. "I was supportive yesterday, and you got so rat-arsed I had to drag you out of the loo before some muggle pissed on your head. I let you sleep on my sofa, and when I got back from visiting Ron, who is only in Saint Mungo's because _you_ put him there, you were throwing this ridiculous tantrum on my bathroom floor. And now you're eating my ice cream."

He reached over her head and took the carton back. "Which, by the way, Ginny won't let me buy more than once a month. Last month, the kids ate it, and I will visit Voldemort in Hell if you let it all melt before I can have any." He dug his spoon in and took a defiant bite.

"You'd shag me, wouldn't you?"

Harry's hand froze, spoon inches from his mouth, and dropped the carton of ice cream into the wastebasket. The very same wastebasket that contained most of Hermione's hair and the trough cookie. To add a Greek dimension to the tragedy, it landed upside down, and that was the end of Harry's double caramel pecan swirl for the month.

"I will pretend for the sake of our friendship that you didn't just ask that question," Harry said, and mournfully savored the last bite of ice cream.

"I'm serious, Harry!"

"No."

"But what if—"

"Not to save my own life."

"If there were no Ginny! Or Ron!"

"Never. Under any circumstances."

"You think I'm hideous, don't you? You think I look like the wrong end of a bald horse, and you secretly make fun of my saggy upper arms. Don't deny it!"

"Hermione." Harry fixed her with a serious look. "I don't think you look like the wrong end of a bald horse. As your friend, I can tell you that you're good-looking. And you have fantastic tits. I still don't want to shag you."

"Why not?" she demanded. "I'm very good at sex. I've read books, I went to a seminar. I have skills!"

"I love you like family, but even if you were the best lay in the world I would rather hex off my own balls. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but really, there was a reason Ron didn't want to marry you."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Hermione asked, righteous indignance bristling off her. "We decided years ago there would be complete honesty between us." Although, given the developments of the last few days, perhaps Harry was on to something...

"Hermione," Harry sighed in exasperation. "Think back, very hard. Who declared that policy of full disclosure?"

"I did, of course," she said. "Ron agreed with me. It was a joint decision."

"Like the decision to completely change his wardrobe? Or the decision to switch to decaf? The entire department felt the fallout from that one for months. _Months_, Hermione."

"I couldn't very well let him keel over from a heart attack at the age of twenty-five, now could I? He was drinking two pots of coffee a day, he was an addict, I was concerned for his health." She drummed her fingers on the toilet lid while Harry gave her an unconvinced look. "He cheated on me with _Pansy Parkinson_," she continued. "Ronald Weasley makes bad decisions! It's a natural law, like gravity, or sudden flash floods in dry lands."

"You haven't let him do his own laundry for the last eight years because you don't like the way he folds his underwear."

"It was for his own good! He just throws them in the drawer to get all wrinkly!"

"How would you feel if someone else made all your choices for you for ten years? Packed your lunches everyday. Decided for you whether you would have eggs or scones and jam for breakfast. Banned your recreational bar-hopping."

"I would—"

Oh. OH.

"This is a subtle attempt to discourage the use of reason, and I don't like it at all," Hermione said. "I state for the record that I'm still right. I mean, I'm _Hermione Granger_."

Harry stood up from his perch and stretched his arms over his head. "Keep telling yourself that. But in the meantime, you need to peel yourself off my bathroom floor so we can get you moved out of the apartment. I would've gone while you were throwing your hissy fit, but," he paused and scratched the back of his head, "your cat. I'm not handling that one."

"Fine," she said darkly as he walked out the door.

"Oh!" Harry ducked his head back around the doorframe. "Hermione, you might want to find a hat. I think I might have one or two left from your SPEW days. I don't know if you've really looked yet, but... the hair..." He made a face and disappeared around the corner again.

She was no stranger to bad hair days. Hermione had experienced more than her fair share of them, and she'd thought being a witch meant she could somehow alter her hair with a convenient spell. Not so. For whatever sick, twisted reason, her hair was impervious to magic. Not just styling charms, oh no; once, in pursuit of a dangerous criminal, a stunner had bounced off her hair and incapacitated the wizard they were chasing. It couldn't possibly be that bad, and she stood up, wincing at her popping knees, to look in the mirror.

It was worse. None of her hair made it unscathed. The spot on her head that had served as home to the unsavory wafer had been shorn within four inches of her scalp, and her hair stood straight up in angry frizzy protest. Elsewhere, she had chopped at her hair with no sense or reason, and all of it was burnt and unevenly lightened by the bleach.

"I'm Hermione Granger," she said to her reflection. "Oh bugger."

"That you may be," the mirror replied, "but this is a bit extreme, even for you. Are you planning to go out like that?"

"_Fuck._"

"A little more emphatically, dear. You've not quite grasped the severity and scope of the tragedy yet."

"Oh bugger _and_ fuck."

"Yes. Quite."

*

**Notes**: Posted just in time for Hermione's 30th birthday! I only bemoan FF's six-spaces-too-short titling restrictions... Oh well.

This is the first installment of what looks to be a multi-chaptered fic, and I've sat tight on it long enough. This is also a wee bit of a multi-crossover, with HP as the home universe, so I see no point in spoiling the surprise and revealing all thus yet. I intend to post updates every..... let's say two weeks. I won't be able to stick to this schedule, but I shall try valiantly, and we shall see how I do. I have a _plan_, and it is _glorious_.


	2. People Who Take the Weather Personally

**Falling, and the Other 11,001 Things to Be Miserable About  
**A Fanfiction by Heist

*

**Two: People Who Take the Weather Personally**

Draco Malfoy was something of a connoisseur of the weather.

English weather mostly tended to the cloudy side of perfect; predisposition to moisture aside, the temperature was reasonable, the seasons mild, the breezes refreshing. American weather was another cup of tea entirely. Depending on the season, month or even time of day, the weather could switch from sunny to overcast to rainy to muggy to cold to sunny. Sometimes in the space of an hour.

At the moment, the sky overhead was unseasonably blue, with picturesque puffy white clouds. The Tulsa microclimate had been incredibly accommodating for quidditch, and the muggles had an excellent stadium for the international season opener. The River City Revelators were hosting the Holyhead Harpies, and so far it was terribly exciting.

Allison Wisdom, resplendent in her red-and-blues, rocketed down the field in pursuit of the Snitch, made a sharp about-turn, and brilliantly feinted out Ginny Potter. While Potter came sweeping down the plains like a shrieking wind and crashed, Allison cut her inertia over Draco's head and interrupted the lovely view.

"That bludger wasn't anywhere near you!" she shouted. Well above them, the Harpies overcame the temporary indisposition of their seeker and scored another goal against the Revelators. "Get your ass back in the air, Malfoy, or you're out!"

Something small and gold zipped past her, and Allison took off again with a fury. Draco sighed and used his broom for leverage to get back on his feet, remounted and kicked off, beater bat at the ready.

"And Draco Malfoy is back in the game, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer cried. "The score as it stands is sixty to eighty in favor of the Harpies, but don't count the Revelators out yet, the field is still wide open. More on the gameplay after a word from our sponsors."

A jaunty jingle for Colgate's Commercial Potions played over the loudspeakers, and Draco smacked a bludger away from the Revelator's keeper, Joe LaFranz. The keeper saluted him, and he swerved back into the action to blast another bludger through the Harpies' defenses. Their keeper dodged to avoid the hit, and the Revelators' chasers scored two goals in rapidfire succession, tying the game.

"Quick combo work with Courter and Reeves, and some nice bludger driving courtesy of Malfoy brings the Revelators up to speed, eighty to eighty. Watch out, Holyhead, River City's known for defending the home turf something fierce."

Draco ignored the rest of the announcer's banter in favor of steering clear of the Harpies' beaters. The ladies in green were playing like they had something to prove, and it was a tough game holding the opposition off his keeper long enough to hassle theirs. "Ginny Potter's flying high again, and damn but she looks like she's gone twelve rounds with Cassia Claymore."

Further inanities echoed forth from the loudspeakers, but Draco missed them when his mobile went off. He cursed, dove between the speeding bludgers and tapped the button on his dragontooth headset. Bless the muggles for making such useful cellular technology, and bless the wizards who had thought to adapt it, but _not right now_. "Severus," he growled, "this had better be important. I'm a _bit_ busy."

"Duck."

Draco swerved low to avoid the rebounding bludgers and whacked both of them with a lucky overhanded shot. He scanned the bleachers for a glimpse of the former potions master. "This line is only for emergencies, Sev!"

"She's here."

"WHAT?" Draco immediately refocused his attention on the gameplay, and cut off Potter as she shot after the bludger. She swooped to avoid him and shrieked as the inertial dampening charms on her broom stuttered protest and nearly crashed again.

"I said _she's here_," Severus Snape repeated. "Up in the Holyhead box."

"Are you sure?" Draco shouted into his headset.

"Yes. Wearing one of those ridiculous hats from her house elf liberation campaign, and DON'T LOOK AT HER YOU F—"

Draco didn't hear whatever word Severus meant to call him. The hat was yellow, for what that detail mattered, but he was already plummeting to the earth below, and with a crunch everything went black.

*

_OW._

_Owie ow buggering fucking OW._

"I told you. I told you not to look, you dunderhead."

"A little sympathy. Just a little. Is that hard?" Draco asked as he fumbled back into consciousness. He opened his eyes and saw Severus looming imperiously over his hospital bed. Well. Trying to, anyway. These days, Severus Snape was much diminished from his former self. Draco did try to spare his bruised ribs and avoid laughing, but the bespectacled twelve-year old at his side couldn't manage to look menacing if he tried.

Severus did not look amused, even when Draco hissed in pain, but he seemed at least to be placated by his vindication. "You're an idiot," he said.

"Yes," Draco replied. "This is true. And I would bet that you are consumed by the urge to share the results of my idiocy, aren't you?"

Glee entered black eyes, and Severus proceeded to inform him of the extent of his injuries, and how Draco was a fool and an addled moron, and how disappointed he was that Draco had not learned anything in the years of their acquaintance about sane self-preservation. Draco let him, though Severus Snape was easily the last person who should be allowed to lecture on the merits of "sane self-preservation."

Snape had cheated death, twelve years previous, but not without unexpected consequences. It had taken a few years for Severus to regain the ability to articulate properly, but once he was old enough to string together complete sentences again he'd explained it all to Draco. There were spells and potions that if prepared sufficiently in advance could prevent any numbers of unpleasant deaths. Whether it was the combination of magics or Nagini's venom, they could only theorize, but when he woke from what he thought was certain death, Severus found his body regressed to infancy.

Fortunately, as far as the wizarding world was concerned, Severus Snape was dead, which spared him the trouble of being executed for Dumbledore's murder, and he had a new lease on life. Unfortunately, the terms of the lease included another wretched adolescence, and the horrors of puberty all. over. again. It had taken him nearly twenty years to recover from it the first time, so Severus could be excused for not being pleased with the state of his existence, and he let Draco know it frequently.

"Are you even paying attention?" Severus asked peevishly.

"Three broken ribs, fractured scapulas, bruised collarbone, dislocated shoulder and elbow, and a concussion, plus or minus the death of my five remaining brain cells," Draco obediently parroted back.

"Hmmph. You're lucky you didn't break your spine, or we'd be stuck in this godforsaken hole of a hospital for at least a week." Severus pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose and glared again for effect. "As it is, you're already going to be here two extra days because your hair-loss potion interferes with the Skelegrow formula they're marketing on this side of the pond."

Draco let his head flop back onto the pillow, and he stared at the ceiling while he mentally counted to five. "Just had to bring that up, didn't you Sev? You just _had_ to drag that one out."

"I'm not the vain quidditch-playing peacock who placed a full head of hair higher than my personal safety on my priorities list."

"_Vain_? Says the _boy_ who intentionally broke his own nose and then lied to the mediwizard who healed it and made it look _completely different_. That's both vain and unoriginal. Granger did the same thing her—"

"And _speaking_ of the person who is responsible for your presence here..."

The hospital door flew open and smacked the wall with a solid bang, and Allison Wisdom stormed in. "Malfoy!"

"Afternoon, Allison," he drawled in reply. "Lovely weather we're having." Beside him, Severus sighed something that sounded physically impossible and took a seat out of the way of impending disaster.

His team captain clenched her teeth, and still something that sounded not unlike a scream of supreme rage emerged from her delightful form. "What the _fuck_, Malfoy?" she demanded. "When you signed on _four years ago_ you told us this wasn't going to happen anymore. That you'd _fixed it_."

Draco shrank back into his pillows a little. "It wasn't _supposed_ to happen anymore," he replied.

"Ah. I see." Allison strode up to his bedside, leaned over him and stared him down with force. At his side, he knew Severus was taking notes. "So when you signed your contract, contingent on the resolution of your ongoing dispute with gravity, you... _lied_?"

"I wasn't lying!" Draco said. Allison's narrowed her eyes, and her glare tripled in strength. "Not exactly, that is," he amended.

Allison straightened abruptly and crossed her arms. "So who is it? I'm not stupid, I was in the top of my class at the Salem Academy. I did the research, and I know _exactly_ what your little problem is. So who is it?"

_Oh bugger and fuck._

Draco told her.

He didn't know why he was surprised when she hauled back her clenched fist and punched him hard in the face.

*

_OW. Merlin's jockstrap, OW._

"I do believe I also told you not to sleep with your boss. Do you remember that lecture, when I imparted to you from my vast wisdom how it is never, _ever_, a good idea _to sleep with one's bloody boss_?"

To be fair (not that Draco wanted to, because honestly this situation was not advantageous to him at all), Severus at least waited for Allison to leave the room and slam the door behind her before he settled into Advanced Pontification Mode. That did not excuse him the unforgivable sin of being right.

"I do, vaguely," Draco said as he lifted his fingers to explore what was surely going to be an egregious black eye, "remember something on the topic, though that might have been the 'Women Get Jealous, You Dunderhead' lecture."

"I also remember telling you that she was bound to figure it out eventually. Your dilemma is unusual, but not unheard of. I believe someone even made a film on the topic."

"Severus," Draco sighed, "shut up, please."

Allison's dramatic exit had made several things quite clear to him, foremost of which that he wasn't going be a welcome member of the Revelators anymore. If she cooled down at all, the best he could hope for was to be benched indefinitely and maybe someday if all the other reserve players suffered catastrophic accidents he might see gameplay again. He certainly wasn't going to be traded to another quidditch team, what with his record of falling flat on his arse (or spine, or spleen, or skull, whichever hit ground first) on English playing fields. It had been a small miracle the American League's Revelators were willing to take him off Falmouth's hands the last time.

This was all Hermione Granger's fault.

*

Okay. So it wasn't entirely Granger's fault.

Draco Malfoy suffered the many tribulations of being a pureblood gladly, but learning he was the unfortunate recipient of an ancient Black family blood curse had been a _little_ much.

It was bad enough, having to go back for an eighth year at Hogwarts after Voldemort's death, and worse still to have every one of his classes with _The_ Hermione Granger. The smarmy know-it-all had grown quite the ego from her association with _The_ Harry Potter, and she had no compunctions about pointing out her moral, magical and intellectual (or so _she_ thought) superiority to him in every single class whenever provided the opportunity.

It had been bad enough, having to apologize through his actions just by bothering to show up everyday. It had been miserable, putting up with her ridiculous ego, and academic panic attacks, and bizarre objections to house elves who were perfectly happy with their stations, and her strange demonically-possessed hair and the downright intolerable way her brown eyes glittered manically, gorgeously, when she discovered the answer to a question before he did.

It was a very bad day, the day Draco realized that in spite of the handicap of her birth, she was really quite lovely.

It was arguably one of the worst days of his life when he realized he had fallen for her, particularly given he'd been standing at the top of a staircase at the time. Falling in love, he learned, was painful, and that lesson was one he'd been forced to learn again and again and _again _after he got out of the hospital wing.

Magic was fickle, and on very rare occasions _literal_, and ancient family blood curses had a lot to answer for. Careful research in Granger-free libraries had revealed the source of his dilemma, and it was Denial. All he had to do to end his Granger-induced gravity problem was to grow a pair and admit, out loud, to her face, that he was bloody snockered arse-over-teakettle In Love With Her.

Honestly. Like _that_ was ever going to happen.

There were still five other perfectly good continents she hadn't invaded yet.

*

**Notes**: I know I had a posting schedule planned. However, there is this thing called Real Life, and my non-fanfic writings, which surprisingly demand a significant portion of my time. Also, I am job hunting in epic fashion, so that I can continue to pay bills and buy frivolous things like groceries and internet access.

The good news is that I have a mighty outline for this fic, and powerful intentions, and also I intend to do NaNoWriMo this year. This means that when I inevitably get burned out on my NaNo project, I am going to have scads of energy to Work On Other Things. Like this fic. No promises, because I'm bad at them, but I've not the slightest intent of not finishing this delightful bit of stress-relief fiction.

Ta for now, my little ficsy podlings. Enjoy.


	3. Not Knowing How to Proceed

**Falling, and the Other 11,001 Things to Be Miserable About  
**A Fanfiction by Heist

*

**Three: Not Knowing How to Proceed**

Hermione's parents were lovely people. Really, they were. But in the twelve years of her adult life that she hadn't lived with them, she'd somehow managed to forget that they could take on Professor Binns in the Olympics of the Terminally Dull. When parted, either by a distance of two streets or two continents, her mother and father were engaging, witty, vivacious and otherwise excellent conversationalists.

They were inseparable.

Hermione had always assumed that prior to her birth, but after their wedding, her parents had amiably agreed to discard their divergent personalities and interests for the sake of marital felicity. There was no other explanation for why the majority of her life they had functioned as the same person in different bodies. Field observation led her to understand the phenomenon only occurred when they were in the same building, so as a child she had striven for ways to separate them and log the results.

At the grocery, Hermione had seen her staid mother pick up new issues of the glossies and flip straight to the sex tips. (She'd been mortified then, but the lecture her mother gave her on puberty had been positively _inspired_.) Once, when her father had gone to New York for a conference on cosmetic molar reconstruction, her mother had actually taken a two-week-long class on Indian culture, including cooking, belly dancing and the Seventeen Forbidden Positions of the Kama Sutra.

Her father also became exponentially more interesting when parted from her mother. She'd been twelve before she learned that before dental school, he had been a flight instructor on HMS Ark Royal, the last fleet carrier of the Royal Navy. A flight instructor. As in, an individual who instructed others on how to properly pilot flying death machines across the sky at immense velocities. Who knew? Other covert spying revealed that her father was not interested in maintaining his immaculate crew-cut so much as reading imported American motorcycle magazines at the barber's every two weeks, whether he needed the trim or not.

The collective Granger Parental Unit had twenty (twenty-one if she counted the lifetime subscription to the Bulgarian-language edition of Dentus Quarterly Viktor had gotten them) subscriptions to dentistry magazines. Hermione knew this because in the three weeks since she'd moved back in with her parents, not two days had passed when a magazine had not arrived in the post, which was another torturous two days in which she had no contact with the wizarding world.

She sighed, and Crookshanks batted half-heartedly at her newest hair-concealing hat from his post on the back of the sofa. Harry had decided the best thing she could do was to drop out of view of the wizarding world for a while. She had disagreed, vehemently, even attended the International Season opener of the Quidditch season, and awkward hat aside it had been nice to watch Draco Malfoy repeatedly plow face-first into the muddy turf. But afterwards, there had been reporters...

In her absence, the English tabloids had gone to print, and not even the American reporters were unaware of the giant photographs of her hanging over the railing outside that muggle bar like someone's bag of dirty laundry emblazoned everywhere. At first, mortification paralyzed her brain, and after she was carefully extricated from the match it took Harry's cooler head to remind her that in not a single photograph did her unconscious form move enough for the camera to expose her face.

Harry had bought her time and given her an alibi, and after she sent out scores of falsely indignant howlers, she returned to her parents' home like a wanted fugitive. It was all terribly embarrassing, and she sighed again.

"Is everything all right dear?" her mother asked pleasantly.

"Quite," Hermione replied.

Silence circled the room, sniffed about the corners, scratched its bum and settled in again. Hermione flicked her eyes to the clock (digital, and therefore silent) and clenched her knuckles so tightly that the joints popped in in gristly symphony. Her father glanced up from the magazine article he was reading, and she momentarily wondered if he'd been able to hear her grinding her teeth as well.

She should have left them in Australia, she decided. She should have left them in beautiful sunny Brisbane, amicably divorced Wendell and Monica Wilkins. When she came back for them, they'd been dating, and thinking about giving the marriage thing another go after they retired from their respective and much loved 'careers.' She had done a grave disservice, ending their social windsurfing and weekend nights out with friends, to bring them back to _this_.

She was going to go mad if nothing happened soon. Fifteen seconds passed. Her father turned another page in his magazine. Her mother rocked in her chair twice. Perhaps she had _already_ gone mad. And then the post dropped through the slot to save her life. "I'll get it!" she blurted, and threw herself from the sofa. Oh sweet Morgana's pantyhose, please let there be something to read. She'd settle for a planter catalog, _anything_.

Two new dental magazines. The electric bill. A platinum credit card offer for her father. An advertisement for a travel agency featuring Lovely New Zealand. (That one she decided not to share with her parents.) A letter in a lavender envelope flamboyantly addressed to Helen Courtenay-Carlisle, which she assumed was meant for her mother, who hadn't been a Courtenay-Carlisle for thirty-five years. And curiously, a small package addressed to her, and stamped with American postage.

She stared at the last in disbelief, and tore open the heavy brown paper wrapping. It was a book, of all things, small, black with a glossy cover and an ominous title: 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About. Hermione blinked, and tugged at a bit of paper folded into the front cover. The paper at first was reluctant to be removed, and she noticed the edges of the book's pages were shaded dark grey to highlight the image of an anti-smiley face on the side.

"What the bloody...?"

At last the paper was freed, and it revealed itself to be a form letter from some bizarre little American book club. HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY HERIMONE, the header began in garish red letters. How in the blazing bloody hell did they know that if they couldn't get her name right? She certainly hadn't gone about advertising it hither and yon. For certain, she'd never have joined a muggle book club and had the books posted to her parents' home, and she hadn't. It didn't make sense. Her mother joined her at the door as she skimmed the rest of the contents.

"Oh, I see another of your books has come in. Why don't we go out to tea and talk about it?" Her mother was smooth, and earnest, and the lie was so convincing Hermione almost believed she had joined a book club, just because the possibility of her mother, _lying_, was unfathomable. "It can be just us girls."

"Yes," Hermione said. "Let's do exactly that."

*

Helen Granger had an unseemly love for the artificial sweetener served at the Herring Bone and Stormkettle Tea Shop. Hermione stared as her mother poured no fewer than five of the little blue packets into her tea. The perfectly innocent breakfast blend went slightly cloudy, and Hermione wasn't altogether certain that she didn't see a miniature Dark Mark hovering over the cup.

"So what you're telling me," she said as she dropped two honest sugar cubes into her blackberry tea, "is that you took out a subscription to an American fiction book club under my name, so Dad wouldn't know about your frivolous recreational reading."

"In essentials, yes." Her mother took a sip of the death-tea as Hermione watched in perverse fascination. "What you have to understand, Hermione, is that your father can be an unbelievable bore."

Hermione was too preoccupied wondering how her mother hadn't choked on her cancer-inducing concoction to realize at first just what she had said. "I... Beg your pardon?"

Her mother laughed. "I'm hardly a paragon of excitement, but ever since Australia I've wanted something more in life. I think it might be nice to go out with friends that aren't colleagues, and talk about something not related to more effective whitening techniques."

Hermione shifted guiltily in her seat and stirred her tea. Part of the reason she'd transferred to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in the first place had been to cover her tracks regarding the Australia Affair. Not content merely to make her parents believe they were childless divorcees, after lifting the initial memory charms, Hermione had modified their memories again. As far as her parents knew (she hoped), she had taken them to Australia and helped them start a new dental practice geared toward a skeptical wizarding public. She'd taken pains to ensure they wouldn't remember ever being the Wilkinses for fear of their resentment, but in her haste to apply the new charm before the old one was off perhaps she _might_ have made an error.

Oops. Time for a decisive Change of Topic. "Who was your letter from, then? An old admirer?" She had watched her mother surreptitiously glance at it on the drive over, and she made certain to lay on as much lascivious innuendo into her voice as possible.

"Actually, it's from my great-uncle Howell, on the Jenkins side of the family." Ah, the infamous Jenkins Side. It was as if to speak of them was to invoke Voldemort's name, but it was an open secret in Hermione's family that the Jenkinses had not approved of Hermione's great-grandmother's marriage, and so had chosen to completely cut off contact. Semi-legendary Uncle Howell had been different, but no one could or would explain why, and besides, the man had been missing for _seventy_ years.

"You mean he's still alive?"

Her mother smiled and pulled the letter from her purse. "For a man nearing a hundred, he seems to be quite spry. According to this he just married a 'charming young woman' from somewhere called Ingary, and he's decided to settle down there."

Hermione had never heard of any such place, and she wasn't entirely sure her mother wasn't misreading potentially difficult handwriting. The quill-produced flourishes on the envelope had given even her trouble. "So why write to you? He's never even met you."

"That's the strangest part. My mother, God rest her soul, was his favorite niece, so he's bequeathed me his house in Wales. Except..." Hermione's mother frowned at the paper. "There doesn't seem to be an address, and there's something about how the last place he saw it was just north of Cardiff."

She handed the letter over, and Hermione skimmed the opening. Energetic salutation after salutation assailed her sensibilities, and it was a long paragraph and a half before he even got to the point of the letter. _'Apparently a bit more time has passed than I anticipated, and it is imperative that you find the house before my cousin does. The last time I was in the house, it seemed to be headed toward Swansea, but should still be reachable by the Network. Fl. Howl's Meandering House and that should do nicely. You might also take pains to secure the attic before waking Hugo—he's prone to talking to anyone and I can't have him spilling the location of my shares of the CCs.'_

Hermione pressed the letter to the table and seized the envelope. More the fool her, she hadn't bothered to check the mailing address or the postage at the first. There was no postage, or at least none she could see, and the address was irritatingly... familiar in mode and form.

Mr. H Jenkins  
The Moving Castle  
Presently Market Chipping, Ingary  
Somewhere Far, Far Away

Well then.

*

Hermione flooed into Minerva McGonagall's office with a binder of genealogy notes, the Granger family bible and a furious mission. As it was a Quidditch Saturday, the Headmistress wasn't in her office, but Hermione had a standing invitation to drop by any time, and she had every intention of using that privilege to its utmost. She stormed through the hallways to the library, and ignored the new librarian's censuring look when she dropped her books to a table with a resounding bang. Madam Pince had been retired for two years, and with no other students in the library she was hardly going to respect the Rules on some twenty-four-year-old bimbo's say-so.

Besides, what had following the Rules done for her? Studying relentlessly had given her top marks and access to the highest positions in the Ministry, but hadn't enabled her to keep them. Yet. Staying faithful to her childhood sweetheart had worked out for so many other people, but she was thirty now, unmarried, and he was probably off shagging Pansy Parkinson. Good God.

Likewise, she had crusaded for muggle and muggle-born rights, made an easy target of herself before and after the war, and done immeasurable good for future generations of bright wizards and witches she would never meet. And how did the universe repay her? It gave her a wizard-born, possibly pureblooded great-grandmother and made her a hypocrite. She _wasn't_ a muggle-born, not really, and she did _not_ want any other nasty surprises creeping in to ruin her week.

Getting a real and proper haircut had already done _that_.

She cracked open her notes and resisted the urge to itch under her cap. Fortunately for her, one of her father's sisters was determined to prove the Grangers were related to Someone Important, even if only by marriage, and she had obsessively detailed documentation for the Courtenay-Carlisles. Hermione glared at the question marks surrounding "_The Jenkins Side—IMPORTANT???_" and accio'd all the Hogwarts yearbooks from 1910 to 1930, as well as a copy of _Nature's Nobility_ and several years of back issues of the _Daily Prophet_.

Howell Jenkins disappeared in 1937. Hermione didn't know how old he'd been, but if the Jenkines were important in the wizarding world at all, it would have made the papers. "Oh bugger."

He... definitely made the papers. CANNONS CHASER "HOWL" JENKINS DISAPPEARS; CANNONS FORFEIT FINAL MATCH. WHERE IS HOWL? FAMOUS QUIDDITCH CHASER STILL MISSING. ENGLAND REQUESTS CANCELLATION OF WORLD CUP. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JENKINS?

For six months, not a single issue of the Prophet missed an article about Howell Jenkins, and it was months afterwards before the speculative articles ended. It seemed he'd made quite an impression on the wizarding world. A 'one-year-later' memorial mentioned his underappreciated work in Charms and Transfiguration, and his sudden career change to play Quidditch for the Chudley Cannons and break legions of girlish hearts. There was even a short bit on his surviving family (purebloods, _of_ _course_), but no mention of his sister. Interesting.

She had the dates of his Hogwarts years, though, and she skimmed the 1920s for mention of other Jenkins activities. Hermione was gratified to discover her great-grandmother had sorted into Ravenclaw and graduated with enough honors not to be overshadowed by her flamboyantly brilliant younger brother. Howell was the Quidditch hero-scholar, but Meghan was a first-class arithmancer, and by the looks of it their cousins were quite clever as well.

It could have been worse. She wasn't quite sure which cousin Howell didn't want finding the house, but it probably wasn't a problem. She turned the page, and HOLY MANKY TOENAIL CLIPPINGS, he was talking about Armand Rosier. Who was... She scrabbled through her notes and dropped her forehead to the table.

Armand Rosier was Bellatrix, Andromeda and Narcissa Black's grandfather. Near as she could figure it, she was a cousin by marriage(s, several of them) to the Malfoys. She tore off her cap and ran her fingers over the frizzy mess of her greatly shortened hair. She could only imagine how many people would take one look at her newly discovered lineage and point that out as the reason for her success in the wizarding world. She would simply have to hide it. No one had found it out yet, so as long as she continued on as usual there wouldn't be any problems.

She was Hermione _Granger_, after all. Granger was a muggle name, and everyone in that family was as muggle as muggle could be. No secrets there, deep, dark or otherwise. She was just packing to leave when she saw it, sitting smugly near the top of the tree on the page of the Granger family bible.

"Oh, like _hell_!"

*

Hermione tucked and rolled as she launched herself into the drawing room of number twelve Grimmauld Place, not even bothering to dust the soot from her shoulders. She doubted much anyone would notice or care for quite some time, and trooped out into the hall. Harry and Ginny had lived in the place for a few years and made it almost homey, but then came along baby James, and they still weren't able to get Walburga's portrait off the wall. Mostly it was a guest house for whenever their charming little cottage in Exmoor couldn't expand quickly enough for holidays and reunions, so no one was there to complain if she tramped ash up and down the stairs except for Walburga.

She was surprised that her steps didn't rouse the vicious portrait, and she added some choice curses as she made her way up to the attic. "Where did you put it?" she asked the air as she sifted through the musty relics Harry hadn't been able to discard. Hopefully, he hadn't listened to her in the last ten years, or she'd have to consult another source, and then her stygian awful _black_ secret would be out.

Hermione discovered the tapestry by accident, and she unrolled it without delicacy. She couldn't decide whether to be disappointed in Harry for hanging onto the arrogantly ridiculous Black family tree, but she put her feelings aside and dropped it to the floor to consult. "Hmm. All right then."

She stomped down the stairs, banging her fist against the wall as she went. "Wake up, you vile old bitch! You're going to answer some questions!"

The former Mrs. Black (nee Black, oh God the _inbreeding_) roused with a shrieking fury, but she barely made it through a few ironic aspersions on the probable parentage of her father before Hermione threw off a few amplified _silencios. _Walburga glared her displeasure and mouthed several creative slurs.

"Look here, you vicious decaying harpy," Hermione said. "I am having a wretched week, and to top it all off I might very well be related to _you_. Now, I have some questions, which you will answer. If you don't, I will set you on fire. You don't want to catch fire, now, do you?"

A staring match commenced, and only when the animated portrait looked away did Hermione let the silencing charms down.

*

Hermione was Drunk. Oh so very drunk. The kind of drunk where it ceased to be just one syllable and encompassed all the merry sorrows and melancholies of the human race. She considered her state of intoxication, and decided she was Not Drunk Enough, as she could still remember that she was a blood descendant of Phineas Nigellus through a squib grandson.

It was a good thing that she had decided not to get Drunk anywhere the tabloid photographers might see her, or her present state would be quite embarrassing. One did not, after all, drink Goblin ale in public.

"It's like this," she slurred to a pained-looking Goblin Queen. "Way I put it, I'm really really really... something. I'm my own sixth, seventh-maybe cousin, thrice removed, unless I look over the Jenkins side again, which is all stupidnesses." She mouthed the word over again, convinced she'd added a syllable too many, and giggled when she saw the shape of her pursed lips below her nose.

Sarah Williams, Goblin Queen, Coffee Drinker and _human_ beloved of the delightfully sardonic (and not-remotely-a-Goblin) King, bounced the giggling toddler on her knee and conjured some Bailey's for her coffee. "You don't say."

"It is!" Hermione insisted. "Just when everything's all swimming and perfect, he forgets your birthday and you get the boot at work and find out you're the inbred descendant of squibs. It's all shite, that's what."

"Shite!" the Goblin Prince agreed. The Goblin Queen sighed, and took a long swallow of her improved coffee.

Hermione might have been okay if, after the uncomfortable revelation at Grimmauld Place, she had just gone home, had a quiet tipple and a good cry and moped in bed. She'd had the drink, she'd cried, but that wretched little muggle book had been _watching_ her, and damn all if she hadn't picked it up and the first two things she saw on the random page she turned to were _dental magazines_ and _chopping off all your hair after a breakup_.

If a little book from another country agreed she should be miserable, she could hardly argue otherwise, right? The resulting fit of pique sent her round the corner to the drugstore, where she purchased a box of respectable brown dye to cover the canary-colored horror on her head. And now her hair was tiger-streaked auburn and fire orange, which was not acceptable _at all_.

Hermione drained her mug and emphatically ripped her hat off her head to tangle her fingers in her much-shorter hair. "Everything is all ruined now!"

The Goblin Prince took his gummy fingers out of his mouth and pointed at her hair with a cheery peal of laughter. Hermione dropped her head to the tabletop in abject despair.

"It could be worse," the Goblin Queen said.

"How?" she groaned, forehead still firmly planted against the table. (It was a nice table, glorious mahogany that managed not to be smudged or dusty or torn to shreds and splinters. She wondered how the Goblin Queen managed to keep it that way in this particularly mad kingdom, and decided to inquire at a later time.)

"You could have psychotic singing birds rearranging your coworkers bodyparts because certain people are poor losers and don't properly know how to get a girl's attention."

"Ron _is_ one of my coworkers."

"Oh. I'll have Hoggle bring you a refill then."

*

**Notes**: I _did_ say this was a smidgeon of a crossover, didn't I? All the same, I shan't be filing it over in the crossover section, because even though I am importing characters from other fine works and mediums of fiction, HP is the native universe for this fic. That means that we're working with the rules and established boundaries Rowling gave us to play with, rather than some of the nonsensical happenings of Labyrinth or HMC.

I just wanted to put that out there, in case of confusion later on. If you'd like a lovely example of other authors doing this, and in a fashion far superior to the one herein, search for **Vathara** and **lembas7**. They are gods of the crossover, and I believe in pointing out Mad Skills when I see them.

Enjoy, my ficsy podlings. Much love.


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